


City of Two Angels

by McBangle



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 18th Century, Aziraphale (Good Omens)-centric, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, Humor, My First Work in This Fandom, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), The Arrangement (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 12:25:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19394098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McBangle/pseuds/McBangle
Summary: Crowley gave Aziraphale a toothy grin. “They want me to go to New Spain. I’m meant to tempt a Padre to avarice.”"I’m going to the Californias as well! Why, we could make an excursion of it!” Aziraphale’s thoughts were already racing with all the sights they could see and the food they could eat.Crowley cleared his throat. “Actually, I was thinking we don’t both really need to go. You know how much I hate traveling across the pond.” He pouted.In which Aziraphale loses a coin flip and has to conduct both a miracle and a temptation in Southern California in 1777.





	City of Two Angels

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Good Omens fic! Warning: not brit-picked.

~St. James Park, 1777~

“Fancy meeting you here.” Crowley sidled up to Aziraphale so quickly that he gave the angel a start, making him drop a good portion of his breadcrumbs. Crowley simply snapped his fingers and miracled them over to the expectant ducks.

“You were the one who suggested we meet!” Aziraphale exclaimed. He puffed out a sigh and shook his head. Typical. “Well, what sort of favour do you need this time?” 

“Who says I need a favour to visit with my favourite angel?” Crowley held his hands up in an entirely unconvincing display of innocence before tossing his own crumbs to the ducks as well. 

Aziraphale arched a brow at him.

Crowley gave him a toothy grin. “They want me to go to New Spain. I’m meant to tempt a Padre to avarice.”

“Marvelous!” Aziraphale clapped his hands, spilling his remaining crumbs everywhere. “I have a miracle to perform in the New World myself! Which part are you going to?” 

“Some bloody backwater in the Californias.” Crowley twisted his lips. “Why anyone would want to live out in the middle of nowhere, I’ll never know.”

“I’m going to the Californias as well! Why, we could make an excursion of it!” Aziraphale’s thoughts were already racing with all the sights they could see and the food they could eat. A nice trip could be just the thing to take his mind off that skirmish happening on the eastern coast of North America. Just dreadful, really.

Crowley cleared his throat. “Actually, I was thinking we don’t both _really_ need to go. You know how much I hate traveling across the pond.” He pouted.

Aziraphale shook his head. “If we’re going to do this, then we need to make it fair. You still owe me from the–”

“Uh-uh-uh,” Crowley cut him off, holding a finger in the air. “You forget about the time when I–”

“Oh, drat, we’re even,” Aziraphale fretted.

“Flip for it, shall we?” Crowley’s grin got even wider than Aziraphale might have thought possible. The demon miracled a coin out of the air and flipped it before Aziraphale could even get a clear look at it. “I call heads!”

~Las Californias, two days later~

Aziraphale landed flat on his arse in the middle of a forest. That was the problem with intercontinental miracles; they were so imprecise. At least it would give him a chance to get his bearings before he delivered his message.

When he finally found the Franciscan mission after thirty minutes of wandering about, he was almost starting to wonder if Crowley had had the right idea about this particular assignment after all.

He straightened his robe outside the door. This was the sort of operation that called for dress whites after all. He conjured up a small miracle to blow open the doors and produce a puff of smoke and a pop of light. It wasn’t nearly as impressive as he could have done if he’d been fresher, but it would at least give his entrance a bit of pizzazz.

“Hearken unto me. I am the angel Aziraphale…” The smoke cleared from his eyes, revealing several dozen strangers staring at him where he’d expected only one. If he’d arrived at the right time and place, then he’d have appeared to the Governor during a moment of quiet meditation. Evidently he’d been a bit more delayed than he had realized.

“Oh. Well. You are… rather more than I was expecting.” He twisted his robe in his fingers. Well, there was nothing for it. Sometimes you had to make do with what you had. “But I suppose I am here and… all of you are here…”

The crowd looked at him blankly. Oh right; Spanish. Foolish of him to forget which language to speak. He’d studied up on it in preparation for this assignment.

 _“Hearken unto me,”_ he began again, this time in Spanish. _“I am the angel Aziraphale, sent to bring you a divine message.”_ That got their attention. _“Build upon this land a great city, and dedicate it to the glory of our Lord. Let it be a shining beacon unto the whole world.”_

A small child raised her hand.

Aziraphale smiled benevolently at her. It had been his experience that children often had more depths of intelligence and empathy than they were given credit for. _“Yes, my child?”_

 _“How did you do that popping thing? With the light?”_ she asked.

 _“Er, right. Yes.”_ Aziraphale nodded his head while searching for an appropriate response. Upstairs had already warned him twice this decade to cut down on the theatricality and focus on quiet good deeds, but none of them really understood the value of a good entrance the way he and Crowley did. Best to just nip this inquiry in the bud before he heard about it from Gabriel. _“That’s a very good question and – oh, what’s that? Why, the Lord is calling me, I must be off, so sorry to run. Don’t forget to build that city, now!”_

~Las Californias, the next day~

It only took a small miracle to give Aziraphale a dark beard and mustache. Nothing Upstairs would ever notice. He didn’t ordinarily use disguises on these missions, but too many locals had seen him the day before; he had to take steps to make sure he wouldn’t be recognized while pulling off Crowley’s assignment. He considered his reflection in the river, then chose to finish the look off with a pair of deeply arched bushy black eyebrows. Perfect. He felt rather a bit like a stage actor.

He’d have preferred to go straight from his job to Crowley’s and then back to London, but he’d needed to lay low for a bit after yesterday’s unexpectedly public pronouncement. Not that there was much to do around here. He rather wished he’d been sent to a bustling city instead; surely he could have inspired the Governor from the comfort of a lovely cantina.

He’d taken the time to do a bit more research on his – Crowley’s – target. He’d learned that the friar spent his mornings in quiet contemplation in his rooms from morning prayers to the noon hour. The perfect opportunity to do a quick temptation without being noticed and then scurry on back to London.

Miracling himself directly inside the friar’s room might attract a bit too much attention Upstairs, so Aziraphale would have to make do with the human way. With the help of a nearby tree, he laboriously climbed up to the friar’s second-story window. By the time he pulled himself through the window he was quite a bit more disheveled than he ordinarily preferred to be, but he supposed it added a bit of colour to the character he was playing.

 _“Who goes there?”_ the friar started.

 _“Friar Contreras”_ , he boomed in what he hoped was an intimidating voice. _“Cast aside thy study of God and instead pursue… er…”_ he sneaked a look at the note he had hidden in his sleeve. _“Money.”_

 _“But I have taken a vow of poverty,”_ the friar protested.

 _“Yes, of course you have, I knew that,”_ Aziraphale sputtered. Crowley couldn’t have given him an easy assignment, now could he? _“But money… is… fun? Yes, fun. So why don’t you pop on off to enjoy your avarice, and I’ll head back to–”_

 _“Aren’t you the one who told us yesterday to build a city to honor God?”_ the friar interrupted.

 _“What? No, no, that wasn’t me!”_ Aziraphale scrambled for an explanation. He hadn’t expected to need one. _“That was… my brother.”_

 _“Your brother?”_ The friar asked.

 _“Yes, my good brother,”_ Aziraphale continued. _“I am the bad one. You can remember I am bad because of the beard upon my chin.”_ He helpfully pointed at his beard.

 _“What do beards have with good and bad?”_ The friar tilted his head to one side skeptically.

 _“Pay attention!”_ Aziraphale commanded sternly. _“Obviously, evil twins have beards upon their chins!”_

_“So you’re not the one who told us to build a city.”_

_“Correct, that was another angel. I mean demon. I mean, that was an angel and I am a demon,”_ Aziraphale corrected himself. _“And also his brother.”_ He squeezed his eyes shut. Somehow he suspected Crowley wouldn’t have had this problem.

 _“Returning to the money…”_ The friar scratched at his chin.

 _“Yes, please let’s!”_ Aziraphale bounced on his heels.

 _“Let’s say I did want to give money a try”_ , the friar reasoned. _“How would I make any? I read, I write, and I preach. You can’t make money doing those things.”_

Aziraphale pondered that. The friar didn’t seem the inventing or business type but surely he could do something with those skills. _“You can… make… stories.”_

The friar laughed. _“No one would pay money for stories they can get for free.”_

 _“Oh, but you’re wrong.”_ Aziraphale brightened. Now this was an area he knew something about. Crowley probably wouldn’t have done half as well with this assignment as he could. _“You will make such stories as all the world will pay you to see them. And then you’ll make second versions of the stories which aren’t as good but they’ll still pay you in the hopes of reliving their enjoyment of the first story.”_

The friar thought this over. _“And this will make me a lot of money?”_

 _“Loads of money.”_ Aziraphale nodded. _“Heaps.”_ He gestured widely.

The friar nodded thoughtfully. _“So what your brother and you are telling us is that we should build a great city dedicated to selling stories to other people for loads of money.”_

 _“What? No, no!”_ Aziraphale held a hand up in front of himself. _“That’s not what my brother told you! The city is to honor God!”_

The friar nodded. _“And to make money.”_

_“No, just God!”_

The friar raised from his seat and folded his hands behind his back. _“But you just told me that money is more fun than God.”_

 _“Right, that’s… that’s for you”_ , Aziraphale stammered. _“Money is fun for you but everyone else should keep listening to my brother. The good angel. Without the beard.”_ He pointed again to his beard to be sure it was clear who was who.

 _“Right, yes, thank you; you’ve given me lots to think about.”_ The friar nodded at him. _“You’re excused.”_

~Heaven~

“My mission to the Californias was highly successful,” Aziraphale reported to Gabriel. “I uplifted untold hearts and minds and inspired them to build a city on the site. And that wily demon only meddled with me a _little_ bit this time.”

Gabriel hummed skeptically. “He does seem to interfere with your missions an awful lot.”

Aziraphale laughed nervously. “Yes, well, that’s what makes him my adversary!”

“So, tell me more about this city!” Gabriel rubbed his hands together. “Pinnacle of holiness? Tribute to moral purity and selfless good deeds? They’re naming it Gloria Dei as planned?”

“Er… about that.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“They seem to have settled on… Los Angeles.”

Gabriel furrowed his brow in disapproval. “You told them to name it after you? I don’t think the Creator is going to like that. Seems a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it?” He smirked.

Aziraphale bit back the urge to point out that Gabriel knew as well as he did that the location chosen for the city was in the San Gabriel Valley.

“No,” he protested. “Los AngelES. The angels, plural. They named it after… all of the angels, really.” He waved his hands about vaguely. “Not after me! There’s only one of me, isn’t there?” He chuckled awkwardly. “It couldn’t have been after me.”

Gabriel considered this. “I suppose not. After all, who would want to name a city after _you?”_ He pulled a face as though the very idea were absurd. “Hmm… The City of Angels – that does have a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“A ring to it! Yes! Absolutely!” Aziraphale nodded enthusiastically.

“I could spin that,” Gabriel stroked his chin. “It’s just a little name change. What difference could that make in the long term?”

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to historians and Angelenos!


End file.
